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Facing Down of Injustice

March 27, 2025

Jeremiah 7:23-28| Luke 11:14-23 | Psalm 95:6-11

In today’s Old Testament reading we hear the prophet Jeremiah delivering God’s stern warning to the Israelites. During their years in the wilderness some members of the tribe had strayed into the worship of false gods and idols:

“Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.” Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels and looked backward rather than forward.

Scholars view Jeremiah as both a reformer and a force for social justice during a politically stormy period of Middle East history. In the chapter immediately preceding today’s reading, Jeremiah calls on the Israelites to cease their oppression of weaker members and neighbors:

This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.

Jeremiah’s words from over 3,000 years ago resonate today. The list of contemporary oppressions of the globe’s most vulnerable seems to grow daily. Innocent civilians in Ukraine and Gaza are lost to political and sectarian violence. In our own country citizens or visitors with valid documentation are swept off the streets and deported without due process. Entire federal agencies are shuttered without the approval of Congress that approved them. Public servants are dismissed without cause, placing their careers and their families’ well-being in harm’s way. Health and food programs aimed at protecting the globe’s most vulnerable populations are canceled.

And so, we ask ourselves how we can act to heed God’s command to protect the weakest among us? How can we be instruments of peace, reconciliation and good will? We can pray for God’s counsel and His comfort of the victims. We can draw wisdom and inspiration from St. Luke’s many efforts to educate us to be members of a beloved community. We can continue doing our best work to feed and clothe the neediest in our midst. We can volunteer or donate to causes that support the plight of immigrants. For the more activist-inclined, we can work through the electoral, legislative and judicial channels to repulse our government’s worst impulses. We can stand in protest. In short, there’s something we can all do to heed the Lord’s word: Do what is just and right.

Mike Grady